Sponsorship 101 & Five Top Must Haves of the Media Buyer

Most companies look at sponsorship to achieve specific business objectives. In today’s economy, companies need to make their dollar reach further and touch more of their target audience. Companies look at sponsorship as a way to reach a target audience, visibility, branding, hospitality benefits to share with employees and top clients, and have their name associated with an organization, non-profit, or cause that they feel will give their brand more value. Of course, there are companies who sponsor because they like to give back to the community or they love the event, but this is becoming less of a priority and building their image and customer base is taking the lead.

Before you can find sponsors, you need to find your viable assets which have sponsorship value. The value is not what it costs to put on the event, but rather what value it has to the potential sponsor. Putting a value to your sponsorship opportunities is based on a few factors:

• The popularity and success of the event

• The competitiveness of the business category

• Amount of assets included in the sponsorship package.

Knowing your market and the value you bring to a sponsor is the key. Ask other non-profits that are similar to you what they give their sponsors and how they set their fees as it will give you a base to start from. Once the value is set, you must be confident in the value to be able to sell it to a sponsor.

Days of the old sponsorship packages are gone. No longer can you have set packages and levels of bronze, silver, and gold. Sponsorship packages need to be customized to fit the goals and objectives of the sponsor. Learn the sponsor’s objectives and build your benefits around what will best assist in achieving those objectives — this will add value and keep the sponsor coming back year after year. Are they looking for more visibility and branding, or do they want hospitality for their employees and clients? It is good to have a base of benefits that you start with and then add to or swap out. Don’t be afraid to be creative in your benefits. Find out what your sponsors are looking for whether it be meet and greets, passes to a VIP lounge or a sponsor symposium where they can network with other sponsors, a designated parking spot next close to the entrance, allowing them help with the event, or allowing them stage time to award sponsorships. You cannot always give them what they want, but you can work out a package that will come close. The more you can help the sponsor achieve their objectives, the stronger your partnership will be and the more likely they will be to renew. Remember to not give away the farm. For instance, if the sponsor asks for more hospitality passes then you must then remove other benefits to keep it at the same value.

Now that you have your list of sponsorship opportunities, it is time to search for sponsors. When approaching a potential sponsor, you want to find out as much as you can about their company. Research potential sponsors by looking through their website, finding out what they have sponsored in the past and are currently sponsoring, and search Google for articles that may give you insight into the company.

Never give a potential sponsor a complete list of all the possibilities unless they insist. Doing this can overwhelm the potential sponsor and will not always help them to find the sponsorship that will fit their objectives. Sometimes it can even scare off a potential sponsor.

Customize your proposals and always add their objective into the body of the text. Talking with the company and asking what their objectives and interests are helps to find the sponsorship that is the perfect match for them. When giving them a proposal, list a few different options to give them the opportunity to feel they have some control in the process. Never underestimate what a company may do. Little companies can choose a sponsorship that you would feel would be out of their range and a billion dollar company can be one of your smallest sponsors. Talk with the company and get a feel for what the objectives are, and then give them options you feel will best achieve those objectives. Give them a range of events and add one or two that may even be higher than you would expect them to go for. You never know what they may choose. If you want a sponsor to return year after year, you need to fit their sponsorship to their objective. It is easier to renew a sponsor than to obtain a new one. Sponsors always appreciate the time you take to personalize proposals and are more inclined to look them over if they are not a cookie-cutter model.

The ultimate goal of a sponsorship is to achieve the company’s business objective. Signing the contract alone will not accomplish this. After the sponsorship is secured, the work really begins with planning the activation and leveraging of the sponsorship. Your responsibility is to help sponsors understand and utilize the assets they are given in the sponsorship package to achieve their objectives. This will require them to spend more than the initial investment if they want to activate their sponsorship and take full advantage of the value. Here is another place you can get creative in procuring sponsors. A few ideas sponsors have used to activate their sponsorships: a pharmaceutical store offering free flu shots, a health insurance company offering biometric testing, an organization trying to save renewable resources decorating free t-shirts by painting on salmon then pressing them to the shirt, a mining organization demonstrating how to safely mine coal by cookie mining — pulling the chocolate chips out of a cookie without disturbing the landscape frosted on the cookie, or making a new customized collectible button to distribute each year. Always encourage the sponsor to come to the event, meet the attendees, and give away logo items.

Now that you have the basics, it’s time to learn what media buyers are looking for. Most large companies and corporations have ad agencies whom they rely on to find the best places they can spend their marketing and sponsorship dollars to get the most return. Sponsorship proposals from charities, community events, and sports teams are presented to media buyers often, which fight for part of each client’s media budget.

Tips to Winover Media Buyers

The following five tips are beneficial to include in a sponsorship from a media buyer’s vantage point. The list of must have items gives meaning to the proposals and allows for consideration and contracts.

#1 – Purpose. In order for a proposal to get noticed, the purpose of the proposal should be located clearly at the beginning of the proposal. The proposal should quickly address why and in what manner the sponsorship will benefit the sponsor. Your proposal needs to get shortlisted and this only happens if the buyer knows what the purpose of the proposal is for — in other words, don’t bury it with fluff about why “we are the best event in the world blah, blah.” Your organization may indeed be the best event in the area, but that generic, unbelievable copy usually creates skepticism from a media buyer. It really is the concise, well-presented proposals that make it to the consideration pile. The purpose of the sponsorship proposal should be the first thing a media buyer reads. This will determine whether it makes it to the consideration stack or the recycling bin.

#2 – Alignment. Your sponsorship proposal should clearly identify the target audience of the sponsored event or asset and describe the way it which it aligns with the sponsor’s target audience. It should quickly capture the media buyer’s attention in regards to the fit for further detailed consideration. Whether the target audience is broad or niche, the audience should be described in detail from both a demographics (age, gender, etc.) and psychographics (lifestyle) point-of-view.

#3 – Statistics. Sponsorship proposals should paint a picture with a few meaningful statistics as to the size and makeup of the organization. This will help the media buyer determine one of the metrics for a good return on investment. In some cases, the sponsorship proposals are awarded based solely on a cost-per-thousand model (CPM), which is derived from the possible number of people reached and the cost in which the sponsor reaches them. This isn’t the case all of the time, but the CPM is generally a consideration in the approval of a sponsorship.

#4 – Creativity. Media buyers receive a wide variety of sponsorship proposals that are generally based on the same ole’ thing — signage, mentions, and inclusion in the thank you ad. Ultimately, many of the components don’t get assessed a value by a media buyer because of the shared nature of the benefit. The components that get assessed with high value are benefits that “can be owned” by the sponsor, which reach the appropriate target audience. To truly capture the media buyer’s attention, include creative ideas that allow signage to be considered in a new way, build booth or location traffic, or give activation ideas that make the sponsorship ideas come to life. Tying in sponsorship ideas with causes can help the valuation of the sponsorship because not only does it provide business benefit, but community or philanthropic benefit.

#5 – Measurability. For most sponsors, the need for measurability to justify the sponsorship effectiveness is necessary. The media buyer assesses the tactics that can become measureable metrics. This often takes place in the form of coupons with promo codes, database registration, and customer counts to the sponsors booth, and/or business after the events. Unless the main purpose for the sponsorship proposal is philanthropic or branding, a metric for measurement should be built into the proposal. This inclusion means the media buyer can react to a proposed metric instead of create the idea from scratch.

So there you have it — Sponsorship 101 basics to help you achieve the Five Top Must Haves of getting media buyers to look at your sponsorship proposals. When armed with the right tools, you can be very successful in building your relationships with your sponsors and the media buyers.